Sleeping With the Enemy

by Adaire, Alexis

  Moving clockwise around the table, Sills said, “Simone Guilbeau is our language instructor specializing in French and Russian.” Simone’s mouth turned up at the sides in a forced smile.

  “Leslie Costas will be your personal trainer, both regarding fitness and hand-to-hand combat.” Leslie was the younger one and her lithe body testified to a rigorous workout schedule, as well as a likely dietary discipline well beyond my scope.

  The black man was introduced as Jordan Williams, and he would be teaching me about all sorts of high-tech espionage tools. “Locks, bugs, hacking, etc.” Jordan was very attractive and I couldn’t wait to start working with him.

  “Lastly, Aaron Deckard is in charge of training you in weaponry.” Deckard shook my hand firmly, testing my grip. I squeezed as tightly as he did while looking him in the eye with a professional smile on my lips. His handshake was a bit too competitive for my taste.

  Sills went on, “You will have six months of training before you will be evaluated for certification and hopefully deemed ready for field deployment. That’s half the usually required time, but we need you ready as soon as possible, so we’ve accelerated your training schedule. All of your training will be one-on-one in order to get you up to speed quickly. If all goes well with your six-month certification test, we will begin using you as needed shortly thereafter while you continue to train. Your initial missions will be relatively tame with little chance of danger. From that point on, your performance will hopefully merit you more advanced missions.”

  This was coming at me rapidly, and I did my best to take it all in. The meeting was adjourned and I then met with my four instructors to lay out the agendas we would be following over the coming months. For the time being, instead of driving into CIA headquarters in Langley, I’d be commuting daily to the highly classified Camp Peary, affectionately called “The Farm.” The large military camp near Williamsburg was boot camp for special agents, the facility famous for teaching CIA agents the spy game, including paramilitary, counter-terrorism and cyber-tech operations. Although enhanced interrogation and assassination techniques are indeed taught there, I would not be taking such courses.

  Other specialized CIA training takes place at the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis located within the CIA University in nearby Chantilly. I had been through the Career Analyst Program at the Kent School for my basic thinking, writing, and briefing skills, and I also studied subjects such as analytic tools, denial and deception analysis, counterintelligence, and warning skills. That was for my now-former job in the Office of Technical Service, but this time I’d go to the Farm to learn specific skills related to my new position as an Operations Officer. My five instructors were all located there, while Dr. Morello’s office was back at headquarters.

  According to the official Agency handbook, Operations Officers “are tasked with collecting human intelligence of concern to the president’s administration and the Pentagon by employing analytic and counterintelligence tools and deception. These officers have sound judgment, integrity, strong interpersonal skills and assessment abilities to acquire high-value intelligence from human sources. They deal with fast-moving, ambiguous, and unstructured situations by combining their street smarts with subject matter expertise and knowledge of foreign languages, world travel, and cultures.” I’m guessing “interpersonal skills” covered the sex part.

  My training was to take place in four ninety-minute classes, Monday through Friday, one in the morning and three after lunch, plus weekly meetings with Morello at headquarters. Weekends were still mine, but the more submersed in CIA culture I’d become over the years, the less that meant. My friends were mostly other CIA employees, and now that I’d curtailed my dive bar one-nighters so as not to bump into Dante Gutierrez again, weekends were pretty much spent at home.

  Sills had instructed me to take the rest of the day off, then start fresh the following morning. I stopped back by my old cubicle to say goodbye to everyone there and clean out my desk. Just a few days earlier, I thought I’d be stuck at that desk forever. Before I left, I poked my head into Thomas’s office and he invited me in, had me take a seat, and poured two glasses of bourbon from his secret stash. There were still a few old-school agents around, and Thomas Page was one of them, part of a dying breed.

  “I just wanted to wish you good luck,” Thomas said, keeping intact his tradition of never smiling. “Sills and his bosses don’t promote from other departments often. They must have seen something special in you, Anna.”

  I returned to Extracurricular Affairs and was shown to my new office, the first time in all my years at the CIA that I had my own door to shut. I put a few things away then headed home. During the drive, Thomas’s words kept drifting through my head. I hoped my new superiors saw something special in addition to a willingness to trade sex for information. Surely there was more to it than that. Time would tell exactly why they chose me for this role, but I wasn’t so naive not to realize that my sleeping with Dante Gutierrez in order to learn more about him was the very thing that got the attention of my new bosses.

  * * *

  Dr. Morello was my first stop on day one of training. She greeted me warmly as she showed me into her office and told me to sit wherever I liked. Looking around, I saw a couch and three different types of chairs. “Don’t worry,” she laughed, “it’s not a test.” I chose a comfortable-looking armchair.

  “So how are you feeling about all this?” Dr. Morello asked. “Still in a state of shock?”

  “I am,” I admitted. “This all came about pretty quickly. I’ve barely had time to breathe.”

  “You can breathe in here, Anna,” she said. “This is a safe space for you. Although anything you say is on the record, of course, unless you specifically state otherwise.”

  I smiled. Hey, free therapy sounded like a good job perk.

  “Do you have doubts about your ability to perform these missions?” she asked.

  I had nothing but doubts, but didn’t want to divulge them. “Some,” I said. “Hopefully those will disappear during my training.”

  “If the missions didn’t entail any sex whatsoever, would you still have doubts?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Dr. Morello leaned back in her chair. “So by that I can assume you’re pretty comfortable about the fact that some missions might include sex?” she asked.

  That caught me off-guard. “I’m quite comfortable with sex, Doctor,” I said.

  “Even sex with people you don’t know very well?”

  She wasn’t pulling any punches. “I’ve had my share of one-night stands,” I told her. “The difference here is that during a mission, I’m assuming I won’t have my choice of men.”

  “Most likely not,” she said. “Though keep in mind that sex will be a last resort. Your goal is always to complete the mission with the minimum physical involvement necessary. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I believe so,” I replied.

  “To be blunt, Anna, you don’t have to fuck someone if a blowjob will suffice. In fact, you might find that mere kissing, combined with the right words, will be sufficient to win someone’s trust.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Are there a lot of us?” The question spilled out of me. I’d been wondering how big this club was that I’d just joined.

  “Agents of this kind? Not too many in Extracurricular Affairs,” Dr. Morello said. “There are about a dozen EA agents. Mostly women, obviously.”

  What wasn’t obvious was that there were males in this particular niche of the spy world. I hadn’t considered that, but it made perfect sense; not all targets would be sexually interested in women.

  “But before we get too far along,” she continued, “let me ask you point blank: Are you prepared to have sex with a target if that’s what’s necessary to complete your mission? Will you be able to do that? Because if you think that even might be a problem, you should tell me now.”

  I returned her gaze while pretending to think
over her question. In reality, I’d already convinced myself I could do whatever I had to do in a mission. “Yes, I can sleep with a stranger if I have to. Like I said, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “What about two strange men at once?” she asked, then immediately added, “What about a strange woman?”

  I stared at the doctor, dumbfounded.

  “Although they’re rare, these situations can come up,” Dr. Morello said. “As a covert operative, you can’t be caught unprepared. You have to know in advance what you’re willing to do, and just as importantly what you’re not willing to do.”

  She paused as she waited for my response.

  “I will do whatever is necessary, Dr. Morello,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “That includes being intimate with whatever numbers and genders needed to ensure a satisfactory outcome to my mission.” My god, would it ever actually get to that point?

  Leaning forward in her chair, she said, “Don’t be upset at me for pushing you. Sills may have told you that you are training to become a certified Operations Officer, but the truth is a little more complex. You are part of a very small subset of what is known off the books as a PICO: a Physical Intimacy Covert Operator. Do you get the significance of that, Anna? The sex is part of your unofficial title. And my job is to make sure that you are capable of successfully and safely completing your missions, regardless of what directions they may take you in. I don’t want you to be surprised by anything.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Did you sleep with…” She took a quick note at a folder on her desk. “Dante Gutierrez?”

  I wasn’t about to lie to her. “Yes.”

  “And you knew at the time he was potentially dangerous?” she asked.

  “I suspected he might be into something,” I said. “I didn’t know exactly what.”

  “But from what I can tell, it appears you seduced him to get close enough to him to be near his computer, then had sex with him to give you time to download incriminating data to your phone?”

  I felt flushed. “That’s mostly accurate,” I said.

  “Don’t be evasive, Anna.”

  “Sorry,” I responded. “Yes, that’s what happened.”

  “Did you enjoy the sex?” she asked.

  The room was eerily quiet. I could hear the air conditioner.

  “Yes,” I replied. Hey, just being honest.

  “Did Dante?”

  “He seemed to.”

  She scribbled something, then thought for a moment. “At any point, were you afraid?”

  “I was anxious the entire time, but I kept a calm exterior,” I said. “Nothing happened to frighten me.”

  Her smile returned. “Don’t worry, Anna. I can usually spot the ones who aren’t cut out for this. You are attractive, you’re smart and receptive to learning, and you love sex but differentiate it from romance. And don’t seem averse to using sex to get what you want. You’ll do just fine in this job.”

  I finally took a breath, then she added, “Plus you crave adventure. And you will definitely get that. You’ll just have to remind yourself that the sex is part of the mission. You might occasionally find yourself enjoying it, but you’ll have to remember who you’re having sex with. You will literally be sleeping with the enemy now.”

  Dr. Morello gave me instructions to report to the Office of Medical Services instead of coming by her office the next week. I had an appointment with a Dr. Vargas there for a complete physical.

  I walked out of our meeting slightly more confused than when I walked in.

  * * *

  My next session was with Leslie Costas, my trainer. Leslie had short blonde hair and a ripped body. After telling me she’d start me off slowly, she told me to run a dozen short wind sprints. By the time I was halfway through, I was panting and my sides hurt.

  “Well, it looks like we have some work to do,” she said. The rest of the ninety-minute session was spent going over my new workout plan. “You’ll have to take the Army’s basic physical fitness test, which we’ll do tomorrow. I’ll need to see you do at least ten push-ups, forty sit-ups, and run two miles in under twenty-two minutes. Then we can start the real training.”

  I was pretty sure I could handle that, though it wouldn’t be easy. “What about diet?” I asked, fearing the worst.

  “What about it?” Leslie countered.

  “Do you have any special diet for me to follow?” I clarified. “Specifically, how much weight am I expected to lose?” This had always been my Achilles heel. Though I had no problems attracting Dante Gutierrez, among other men I’d been with, I assumed Sills thought my curvy body would need to be resculpted to make me a sufficiently attractive femme fatale type. I would be of no use to the Agency if my targets didn’t take the bait.

  “No, you look fine,” Leslie said. “We just have to improve your conditioning before we can start working on your hand-to-hand combat skills.”

  I hesitated. “But don’t you think—”

  “Look, Anna, I’ll be honest with you. The Agency has few options when it comes to its PICO girls.” Leslie searched for the right words. “They have a couple of supermodel types. And they have several average-sized women. One of the main reasons you were chosen for this job was because of your body.”

  I still didn’t get it.

  “They needed a curvy girl,” she said. “But someone who combined those curves with confidence. Not all men like their women thin. The Agency wants to be prepared for those instances when the targets want a little more meat on the bones.”

  It was starting to sink in. “So they want me to look like this?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” Leslie said. “In fact, you may actually have to eat more as we ramp up the workouts. Your body will change as you convert fat to muscle, but we don’t want you to slim down much.”

  That was a huge relief. I was dreading being forced to work my way down from my current size fourteen to an eight or a six, because every time I’d ever attempted something like that before, I’d failed miserably. I was a curvy girl, and was happy with that. And now I was going to be an extremely fit curvy girl.

  By the time our session ended, I decided I really liked Leslie. Little did I know at that moment that over the next few months I would grow to love and hate that woman in equal amounts.

  * * *

  After a lunch, which I ate outside on a beautiful June day, I met with Jordan Williams to begin training in the technology of espionage. Absorbing the fascinating information would have been easier had Jordan not been so damned handsome. His chocolate skin, shaved head, high cheek bones and green eyes were distracting. True, everything that came out of his mouth was nerdy, but those male-model looks and that resonant voice made it all sound so, so sexy.

  “Agent Mercer,” Jordan began after getting me settled into a chair in his small classroom. “I don’t know much about your new job other than I need to train you on the various methods of collecting intelligence.” Jordan continued, “It sounds to me like you’ll be a covert field operative working with the Special Collection Service. Of course, officially, the Special Collection Service doesn't exist, but that hasn’t stopped me from training a few of their agents to place cutting-edge technology in incredibly hard-to-detect places. In other words, I’ll mostly be showing you how to plant bugs and GPS tracking devices.”

  I’d let Jordan show me anything he cared to.

  He spent our allotted time covering the basics and I found it all enthralling. “Here’s the thing,” he said, “It would obviously be much easier just to intercept communications from our targets — phone calls, texts, email and the like, but because intercepting them is relatively easy, they’re often encrypted. Deciphering them and translating and identifying any useful information becomes a game of cat and mouse. The Agency deciphers some elaborate encryption, then our foreign targets find out and change their methods to shut us out again. So it's usually easier to simply install a hidden microphone and reco
rd voices before such encryption ever takes place. Sensitive audio and video devices have been made small enough to be placed just about anywhere.”

  Having been in the Agency for so long, I knew some of this already, but much of it was a revelation to me. I had no idea the CIA had figured out how to use lasers to detect faint movements made on a window pane by the sound waves of nearby human speech, then reconvert them into an audible form. He even told me about a failed experiment called Operation Acoustic Kitty, in which the Agency had attempted to plant technology inside the bodies of cats that would allow them to remotely see or hear anyone in the vicinity of the altered feline. Between the hot teacher and the information he imparted, I remained fascinated the entire class.

  * * *

  Next up was Simone Guilbeau, my language tutor.

  “Mr. Sills tells me you have studied French and Urdu,” she began after I’d settled into a chair in her high-tech office. There were two study carrels, both outfitted with computers, headphones and microphones, and large monitors. “Really? Urdu?”

  “My best friend in college was Pakistani,” I explained. “My French is serviceable, but my Urdu skills have eroded since college.”

  “Je suppose que vous n’auriez aucun mal à convaincre un dangereux agent secret allemand que vous êtes à Paris?”

  The sentence came at me so fast that I only caught half of it, something about a dangerous German secret agent and Paris.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t ready. Could you please repeat that?”

  “As I thought,” Simone said. “You are far from ready, Anna. I will need you to come back at the end of each Tuesday and Thursday for another hour.”